BY PETER BOWES | MONDAY JANUARY 22, 2024

Does conflicting advice about diet and exercise drive you crazy? Are you annoyed by the use of acronyms in longevity science? It is so easy to be confused about the best ways to live longer and healthier, when much of the information we receive is contradictory or overly complicated.

Brad Inman, founder of Inman News, has spent much of his career staging world class events, focussing on real estate. But now, at the age of 71, the award winning journalist and businessman is turning his attention to health and longevity.  

Motivated by a desire to continue his enjoyable and fulfilling life – along with a frustration about a lack of accessible information – Inman is launching a new event to try to demystify longevity science. The Live Long and Master Aging podcast will join some of the world’s leading experts at the two-day Livelong Summit in Palm Beach, Florida, in March.

In this interview, a co-production with Livelong Media™, we unravel Inman’s mission to bring transparency and simplicity to the longevity space. How should we explain complex research findings, so that everyone can benefit from it? And who can we trust?

Listening and viewing options: Apple Podcasts | You Tube | Audible | Tunein | Spotify | Pandora Podcasts | Google Podcasts | BuyMeACoffee

Connect with Brad Inman: LinkedIn | Livelong Summit | Inman.com

The Livelong Summit will take place at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fl., on March 15th and 16th.  

The event is open to everyone, offering in-person access to leading experts, with the goal of challenging and explaining the latest innovations.  

Tickets must be purchased in advance.  

We’re pleased to share our promo code – LLAMA – to get a 55% discount off passes for all the summit’s talks, panels and breakout sessions.   

Enter code LLAMA at checkout. 

I hope you can join us. 

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Discounts & Affiliation disclosure: This podcast is supported by sponsorship and affiliate arrangements with a select number of companies. The income helps to cover production costs and ensures that our interviews, sharing information about human longevity, remain free for all to listen. For a full list of discounts and to read more about our supporters click here.

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Topic covered in this conversation include:

• Brad Inman’s personal inspiration – how the spirited lives of his parents inspire a discussion about compressed morbidity—the drive to reduce the span of sickness and stretch our days of vibrant health. 
• Defying the Grim Reaper
• The systemic barricades – those within the medical establishment that stifle clear communication and patient empowerment. 
• The overuse of acronyms and complex terminology in the medical field.
• Why clarity and education are vital for patient care. 
• The Livelong Summit where speakers are thoroughly vetted and curated for transparency.
• Fostering a community where attendees can share experiences and learn from one another, embodying the “wisdom of crowds.”

TRANSCRIPT– This interview with Brad Inman was recorded on January 15, 2024 and transcribed using Sonix AI. Please check against audio recording for absolute accuracy.

Peter Bowes: Brad, welcome to the Live Long and Master Aging podcast.

Brad Inman: Thank you. Peter, it’s great to be with you today.

Peter Bowes: Really good to talk to you. Just before we dive into that whole new world of science and longevity and talk about your conference, which is coming up in a couple of months time, let’s just talk a little bit about you and your career. Is serial entrepreneur a fair description of what you’ve been doing? 

Brad Inman: Yeah, I kind of have two sides to my past and my career, Peter, along with being a father and a husband and a few other personal things. And that is I always want to be a journalist. And I became a journalist at a very young age. I became a sports journalist so I could take on the bullies. The bullies were all athletes. And so you can only… I was from the country and there you had to beat brawn with brains. So when I covered the athletes, they couldn’t beat me up. But anyway, I was a I was a journalist my whole life. And then I was in San Francisco during the internet. And also part of my background is being an entrepreneur. So I mix being an entrepreneur with being a credible journalist and everything I did is a is a founder of companies. You know, church and state was important, separating the business side from the journalistic side and keeping things credible and then going into industries that deserve to be disrupted, like real estate and e-books and video and a lot of other businesses I started it was the same lane, you know, bringing credibility, being little Switzerland, being independent, not being paid off, not being compromised. And that’s a lane we’re pursuing here in the whole world of longevity, it seems like there’s charlatans in one side. And then the other side are these elitist doctors, and we’re trying to find the middle there, where we can bring everybody together and democratize information for the public.

Peter Bowes: You’re absolutely right about that. And it’s it’s a great venture. It’s a fascinating venture. And I’m really looking forward to looking into the detail. And really what motivated you to do this? You always are an entrepreneur. And I think I’m right in saying that you started as a very young man, as a boy, almost cleaning windows. That was your first business venture.

Brad Inman: Wow. You did some research, Peter. Yeah, it was called Bucket and Brush Brothers, and we cleaned storefront windows for a dollar, a store and an early lesson. Peter, I went into business with my brother. Who? A good guy, but he was kind of lazy, so I learned. Never go into business with your family.

Peter Bowes: I think that’s a good rule. I’m curious in terms of what you’ve learned over the decades from business and operating and managing people, creating companies, ending companies. What do you think has been the life lesson in terms of what you plan to do next? What have you learned? What has inspired you to move on to this new venture?

Brad Inman: Well, I sold a company. I sold several, but I sold one two years ago. And, my wife Yaz, who’s French, Moroccan, her and I traveled around and did fun things, and we called ourselves luxury nomads. And that alone kind of sounds arrogant. Not really who I am, but. Or her. But, I got bored. But then I realized I have a great life. I have two children and five grandchildren. I had a wonderful career. I have friends all over the world. The only thing that was going to end this incredible ride was the Grim Reaper. And so I started, like many, pursuing and trying to find information personally about longevity. And I said, wow, there’s so much out here and it’s hard to sort out. And that inspired me to, you know, hold a conference for myself. And then I realized, I’m going to invite some people to come. So I’m again, I’m an entrepreneur, and I saw a lane and an opportunity to do that. So I don’t know if I answered your question. I’m rambling, but …

Peter Bowes: No you did. It was it was an interesting answer. And what really, I think set me thinking was you mentioned the Grim Reaper, and I know a lot of people wonder about those of us who are interested in human longevity, whether it is really just a fear of death that motivates us. And it certainly isn’t from my perspective, it is a motivation, it’s a desire to live as long as I can and enjoy full health for as long as I can, and be able to do all of those things that I’ve been doing for the past six decades. That’s what I want to achieve. Death is something that’s going to happen to all of us, and it’s inevitable. But I’m just curious in terms of your perspective.

Brad Inman: I’m probably a little a little different than you, Peter, on that. I very close to my parents brought up in southern Illinois, and they were my biggest fans and steered me into all the things I did and encouraged me. And when I lost them 11 years ago, I watched my mother and dad die and took care of them with my brother. My mother and father loved life and they wanted to live longer. My mother was more like decisive. I’m done. I don’t want to go back to the hospital, but my dad to the last day. He had a clean shirt and his hair combed and a hat on, you know, to go to the final 911 call. And he was determined to live. And he wanted to live because he loved life. And, you know, I’m like my father and my mother, but I think my desire is to keep this parade going because it’s fun. As one friend of ours says, we want to get on the parade and Yaz party plane our party train because it’s fun. We live life to the fullest. Now things don’t go perfectly and I’m realistic about that. And I’ve had pain in my life and not everything is rosy. I’m not one of these crazed, optimistic people, but I think my motivation is to live as long as I can, as long as it’s like this. And I think that’s part of your inference is a quality of life, because I do know my parents, the last 6 to 9 months of their life was really shitty, to be blunt about it, Peter. But but that’s going to happen. That’ll happen to all of us. But, you know, if I can keep it going like it is now, that would be that would be grand.

Peter Bowes: I think one of the interesting phrases that people in the longevity space use is compressed morbidity.

Brad Inman: What is that again that’s an interesting.. 

Peter Bowes: Compressed morbidity. So it’s the period of time. It’s that decline from full health and the kind of enjoying life to its maximum that you’ve just described, to the inevitable decline which will come to all of us. But if you can compress that period of time as much as you can to maybe some people it could be just a few days, maybe a few weeks, a few months, but not an extended period of time, of of several years or even decades from when you begin to suffer from chronic illnesses to the point that you die. So to keep that period of time as, as short as possible. And ultimately, I think that’s what the goal is, isn’t it, to just to maximize those, those healthy years when we can, as you say, enjoy the fun side of life?

Brad Inman: Yeah. And I think, to put it another way, Peter, I don’t know if I’m right here, but it’s not counting years, right. It’s kind of like I never did anything for money, but if I did things right with integrity in the media business, I found money came my way. But it never. I never got up in the morning and say, I want to make money. Similarly here, I don’t think I ever wake up and say I want to live to 92 or 95 or it’s just not who I am. But I do know I want like, this day started out great because I met you, right? And I want another day like this tomorrow. And if I can get that, I’ll be, I think, a happy camper.

Peter Bowes: Where would you say you’re at now in terms of of your life, your state of health, your motivation to eat the right things, to exercise, to do all of those things that we all know we should be doing. Where are you right now? And and maybe extrapolating from that, what do you hope to learn, especially from this conference?

Brad Inman: Well, I’m probably around a six. And part of the reason is I worked really hard. I everyone that knew me knew that and I outworked everybody. But I also had a really good time. I had a, you know, family and friends and and I worked hard at having a good time and but I know what I did, even though I lived in California, where everyone jogs every morning, I was very unhealthy. I was the nerd, you know, I was the guy sitting behind a computer, gaining weight and not taking care of my health and eating the wrong things, and I paid for that. I have three stints in my heart. I suffered from obesity for many years and still am overweight, and now I’m trying to correct some of the ills of my past. And I think you can. What I’ve learned is you can. I mean, the good news is I didn’t jog five miles a day, so guess what? I don’t have a bad knees or bad shoulders. All my friends that jogged and used to criticize me, they’re all going to get surgery. I’m not because I didn’t do any of that. But what I did do is some other damage. So right now, I’d say on the health scale, maybe a 6 or 7. And I got further to go and I’m into this and it’s now a media passion, but I’m not, I’m not crazed yet, but I’m also a guinea pig for my audience. Peter, I have done a full body scan. I’ve done, you know, the bloodwork. I’ve done. I have an Aura Ring, which I lost in the ocean in Miami the other day because, you know, I’m swimming and I guess it can’t do everything. But it’s interesting as a guinea pig to experience these. And then I’m writing about them because with this, we’re going to launch a media company around this. But, you know, my wife did the full body scan in Paris just a month ago, and you may have seen the New Yorker article this weekend. It was excellent. And, you know, really brought up this question of overtesting and Yaz found, they found in the full body scan, a small brain aneurysm, and it’s 2.5, I guess, millimeters. And we went through a month of hell, and she kept going back to doctors and back to doctors, and we were very panicked. But in that we learned a lot. And this is, I think, kind of part of the vision here. I have always been about transparency with the public, like I’ve been involved in Climate Check, and we wanted to give climate data to everyday citizens. So the view was, instead of the big shots making all the decisions about the future, what if we gave the public access to how climate change is going to affect their property, and we gave them that information? Well, guess who opposed us? All the elite academics and the government agencies. You can’t give that to the public. You can’t give them that information. But this weekend I saw my brain go back and forth. I thought, Yaz and I did go through all this stress. Was it over testing? Was that wrong? You know, was that just something you don’t need to know? But then I always default to, hey, give the information to the public, let them decide. But give them guidance, give them information. And I think that’s what we’re trying to invent here. Like if you go through this, if you try these things, here’s the pros and cons. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do my whole life as a journalist. What’s the pro and con. You know, go after the big shots like that, are making all these claims, you know, are you conflicted? Are you getting paid? Start with that. And secondly, are you sure it’s scientific? I mean, this obsession we all with science now is fantastic. But we’ve also learned since Covid that it’s hard to figure out what is science and what is scientific. So that probing, that pushing is a big part of my personal agenda. And it always has been. My curiosity, some to the point of people think I’m obnoxious because I’m so, you know, at a party, I start asking too many questions, but it’s just who I am. And I think that’s the voice that we’re trying to bring to this. Again, I’m rambling, but I’m 71. Peter.

Peter Bowes: I think you’ve earned the right to do that. And being the person at the party that asks all the questions, I think that’s just being part of a good journalist, isn’t it? And I think you’re bringing those skills to what you’re doing now. You you wrote an article a few months ago looking ahead to this new venture. And you, you aimed in on this topic, which you’ve just been really expressing about who we can trust in the longevity sphere. We have all of this, as you say, all of this information, all of this data, all of this science, all of these products, all of these pieces of equipment that we can go and use at health spa’s. But what can we trust and whose advice can we trust? And I think that really gets to the heart of of really where we are now in longevity, because there’s so much information out of there that it’s understandable that ordinary people like you and I, who are not the scientists creating these things, can easily be confused. And I think that’s where there is a role for someone like you to just to try to dissect all of this and give the public a very clear and honest view of what is out there and what the potential is.

Brad Inman: Yeah. And I think also at the heart of this is communication. My daughter and I were talking this weekend about this New Yorker article, and I was talking when I was a little kid. We revered our our parish priest and our doctor. We looked up to them. And, you know, I remember when I went to school, my friends that were doctors, they went to school for 12 years, in residency for two years. And and I felt quite inferior just getting a bachelor’s, you know, and that was kind of the mindset I had. And anyway, my daughter was telling a story. She went to get check on what she thought might be skin cancer, and they were just aging spots. But what did her doctor say to her? Instead of having this understanding conversation and learning and teaching and talking and because they don’t have time, she said, what are you doing here? Those are just age spots, and that’s a level of communication. I have a daughter in law who’s a doctor, and I sent her the New Yorker article, and she had told us when my wife Yaz had these tests, like, you’re over testing. And she sent this really stern email back saying, I told you overtesting is too information. So the medical establishment has done a really bad job, Peter, of communicating to us and helping us understand. And, you know, I always say outer space is a mystery. Under the sea is a mystery, and my body is the big mystery. And I’d like to know more about it. And then you in the medical establishment, whoever you are, whether it’s the new longevity people, or whether it’s the traditional doctors. You need to help us explain what we found out about our bodies. And it seems that’s a duty. And so this miscommunication, something is superficial, may seem superficial, is that is really important. So, you know, hold the parish priest. We we already learned about the parish priest. You know, they they got problems. And similarly here I think the medical establishment has a communication problem. Either they’re too busy, they’re not taught this and we call it bed, you know, like, what do they call it? Bed manners. So that’s part of it. We need to communicate. We need to give people more information, but we also need to to curate it, and we need to interpret it. And we need to try to, you know, in longevity there’s a million acronyms. And I just want to say to them all, stop it. We don’t know what these acronyms are. We have no clue what you’re talking about.

Peter Bowes: That’s exactly what I was going to raise with you. Now that acronyms send me crazy because we just don’t know what they are. The medical profession and others use them as if we should know. And it’s almost a little insulting to talk to an audience, to talk to patients in a in a fashion that they can’t possibly understand. And it’s not our fault. It’s not people’s who yes, they want to be healthy. Yes, they want to do the right things, but they’re not spending every day reading medical textbooks. And that’s that’s a great frustration of mine that we need to. And I try to do it on this podcast, not to use those acronyms, not to use not to assume knowledge.

Brad Inman: Well, and some of these terms have, you know, I think one I read the other day and, you know, I’m a writer, so I like to edit. And we believe in verbal economics if you want to get across your message. And I think there were eight syllables in a word, a medical terms. And I thought, who in the heck came up with an eight syllable word? You can’t even pronounce it. And so you can never actually ask someone what it what it means, because no way you’re going to remember all eight syllables. So yeah, I think there’s God, the medical profession. I think worse than I mean publishing. It was the elite publishers who made the decision about who could write a book and then thank God for blogging, you know, that we gave everyone access to it. Same with television. A few people made all the decisions about who was on television. And then, you know, we saw the democratization of video where anyone could make a YouTube video and publish it. And I think similarly here, it’s the same thing. You know, there’s this elite group of people who are really important, by the way, just as publishers are really important to put out good books and just like people that can find television talent, there’s not we’re not dismissing their credentials or their credibility, their importance. But if they just did a better job of of, you know, explaining what they do and how they do it, that would go a long way.

Peter Bowes: Well, hopefully that’s what you’re planning to do at your upcoming event. And you’ve got a really good lineup of of experts who are doing all of this excellent work that you’re talking about. Can you set out for me in broad terms, what we can expect, and hopefully people watching and listening to this will get an opportunity to come along and experience it for themselves. But what is your goal?

Brad Inman: The goal is I think that people leave. Well, one, we’re going to learn a lot. Peter and I sit here not as a medical expert. I sit here as a media person. And I don’t sit here having all the answers. What we decided to do is I’ve built pretty big companies, and I think I want to build a company in this space, an independent media company that’s not conflicted, that doesn’t take stock, and startups and, you know, doesn’t have side deals and consulting fees. And I think we want to blow it out all over the world. And I think we want to build a media piece to it as well. But first we need to have an experience. So the best way to do it is I mean, I go on to LinkedIn, LinkedIn and write a lot of things just to get feedback from the public, you know, and, and I don’t know, there’s 17,000 people in there. And, you know, they give me a lot of feedback. But the great thing about this event is understanding what is important to people and the audience and the public, and then using that to refine. So I don’t mind admitting, and I really appreciate people coming, but I hope to learn from them. And then that’s kind of the spirit. If you’re there, Peter, you’ll you’ll feel from the event. We’re very participatory, as I always say on stage when I’m interviewing one of these experts, I’m up here not to gloat over the famous speaker I’m sitting next to. I could kind of care less at my age, but I am worried about the woman who flew all the way from Omaha to Palm Beach and like, what’s her experience? So that’s why I tried it. And if it’s dumb it down, I’m happy to dumb it down. But as you said, that’s not really the word here. It’s just explain what the hell you’re talking about. So one thing we’ll learn is what the public wants and what information is important to them. Like, we break into these 25 roundtables on different subjects, whether it’s, you know, body scans or whatever it might be, the science, you know, lifestyle. And we’ll know right away one of those tables is going to be 50 people around that session. We don’t know what it is yet. So we’re going to learn a lot. But that’s all about building what we do and that’s build a community around what we’re up to. So one goal is to start to build a community around this issue for people that want independent, credible information. They also want, since we’re little Switzerland, we’re having them all there. As many as we can, is to find out who in this crowd is, you know, relevant and meaningful to the audience. And this will come through all kinds of things we’ll do. But my goal for people is to be able to do what I just did, and that’s to, this journey or exploration I’ve been on is give the public a shot in a couple days of learning all angles and all places and having resources and who to call and who to depend on. And part of that will be sitting and meeting people like themselves, you know the theory of wisdom of crowds. And I don’t want to pretend a thousand people together know as much as a doctor, but I actually think they do. And so we’ll know from the wisdom of crowds a little bit about, you know, what really is important to people and what they’re afraid of and what they need to know. So that’s a goal. And but to learn and make a better, better event and to keep improving it as we, you know, move it around the world.

Peter Bowes: To what extent have you done your and the people working with you have done your due diligence to make sure that the speakers at your conference are, to use the phrase, the real deal, that they are not from that space where people are just trying to sell something, sell a supplement that really, frankly, isn’t going to do much good, or some other intervention that hasn’t been thoroughly researched. In other words, for people coming to your conference, how confident can they be that the speakers that they will be interacting with are to be respected?

Brad Inman: Well, my biggest fear, Peter, is having some, you know, charlatan up there that we don’t know something about. We are finding here. Like a lot of things in a lot of industries. I found this so many times. You know, you probe and probe and probe and you find out, wow, they’re selling supplements. You know, I didn’t really know that. Does that make them a bad person? No, but I’m big into disclosure. So if they are selling a supplement, I guarantee you we’re going to tell people out of the gate or they’re selling whatever they’re selling or but the key is getting people on the stage. We’ve taken somebody off the stage already. Because of that very question. We have tried to do rigorous due diligence on everybody and if anything, any hint of conflict. You know, we’ll just remove them and but we’ll probably make some mistakes. I notice, you know, in my life as a media person, I make mistakes and we run corrections. But it’s really important. We’re talking about people’s health. We’re trying to be very cautious, but I turn it around. Peter, if you see anyone on the agenda? Can you tell me privately that would scare you? I mean, we tried to get the most credible longevity people, but, and we’re adding people as we go carefully. And, and I can’t tell how many people want to be on stage. And I have a pretty good gut. You know, you live long enough, your gut gets pretty good. And I have a woman I’ve worked with for 20 years in this field, and she does really rigorous due diligence, and she’s rejected all kinds of people. And then, of course, people want to pay to play and we just don’t do it. You know, you can’t pay your way onto the stage. But we have, I think, the right protections in place. But again, we’re learning. And people told us we have a great agenda and they’ve identified people that they don’t think are good and we just don’t put them on. And we pulled someone, as I said. What did you think of the agenda, Peter?

Peter Bowes: I think it’s a great agenda. And maybe I’ll get you to tell me a few of the names in a second, but I think you’ve got a and in fact, some of the people on your agenda have have been on this podcast in the past. But it’s a great agenda. It’s a great array of people. And what I was going to say was that there are, of course, there are nuances, and just because someone is involved in the production of a supplement doesn’t necessarily make them inappropriate, because there are some good supplementations with a lot of deep scientific research behind them. And I’d be the first person to say that don’t necessarily dismiss supplementation. But you’ve got to be very, very careful. You’ve got to really dig deep to to look at the science behind them and to ask the question, is this something that’s going to benefit me? 

Brad Inman: Yeah. And by the way, you nailed it. And I didn’t mean to pick on supplement. I was just using that as an example only because if there is a conflict we would rather disclose it. And when I say conflict, it’s not a conflict to be in business. You know, I’m in business. I’m selling, you know, registrations and we’ll sell advertising someday. That doesn’t make. But people know that there are advertisers. They know. And similarly here, I just think we need to, if necessary, we need to ask people to disclose, you know, do you have a program or do you have do you have a supplement, whatever it may be? I mean, I don’t want to obsess on that so much, but just try to bring those things. You know, no one cares. People are fine if you disclose things. It’s when it’s a secret later you learn, you know, that that people get. They see the conflict and they get upset.

Peter Bowes: Yeah, exactly. Well, you tell me then. Let me turn it around again. You tell me a few of the headline names that you’ve got. I know you’ve got, Dr. Mark Hyman, for example. You’ve got David Sinclair, two of your big headline names, but you’ve got people that we may not necessarily have heard of, but they’re doing some really interesting work.

Brad Inman: Yeah. Michael Greger I don’t know if you know him on the nutrition front, but a lot of people that are into nutrition are big on him. I don’t I got some cliff notes here. I hope you don’t mind. We’ve got Bryan Johnson who many people know who’s on this incredible run. But he also is kind of a devil’s advocate, which we like. Edwina Rogers, who is with the Health Policy Institute, who I found in early conversations with her, she knows the whole landscape. So she helped me and many of these other people. I was really I was so impressed how people because I was a nobody, how willing they were to help us. We got a woman named Daisy Robinson who is big into, you know, women’s health and, you know, ending menopause and, you know, fertility. We’re really emphasizing that we’re finding a lot of young people. Andrew Steele’s coming across the pond. He is what I’d call the kind of devil’s advocate category. And then we have a lot of, they’re not secondary speakers, but, you know, prominent doctors, credible doctors that we’ve been turned on to. And, you know, every time we get an idea or a recommendation or we think about it, we do a lot of work to try to uncover who they really are, because we have breakout sessions. We have these interactive sessions and then we have moderators. Most panels are moderated by journalists, so they’re not conflicted and they’re independent. So that’s some of it. But there will be 50 speakers. There will be a lot of content. I’m in the school of overwhelm people with content and they can sort out and decide which is most useful to them.

Peter Bowes: It sounds really exciting. What will you do next? What do you hope that this launching pad will actually lead to in the future?

Brad Inman: Well, I think first and foremost is learn from this. As I said, learn from the the event we’re having and get as much feedback as we can and improve it, make it better and better, and then, you know, take it on the road. But then we hope to, you know, I’ve always had in the media business that I’ve been involved with digital media. We have consistent, regular daily content. That’s kind of the news that we publish. And we’re going to get into that business. We’ve been in the podcast business as part of that. There’s a great relationship between all of these elements, where people can read and be informed every day, and then they become a community commenting and meeting each other, and then they can meet live. And so we hope to create a community that’s probably the big picture. So we’re going to start with this little plant that we’re planning here. And you know we may end it after. We may say this isn’t what we want to do. Maybe I want to go back to being lazy. But for now, we’re going to we’re going to test it here and see, I learned a long time ago I raised a lot of money from venture capitalists and others where you have to sit and lay out this huge vision and how you’re going to create $1 billion company. And I could never go into one of those meetings. I raised plenty of money without doing it, and that’s not who I am. I like, like I wrote something this morning for LinkedIn and that is what I really find joy in. But I’ll hire really good people to take it to the next level. I’d love to get you involved somehow. Peter, you have a great reputation.

Peter Bowes: Well, I would absolutely love to get involved and well, let’s continue to talk about that, because I think what you’re doing, there’s a real good synergy with what I’ve been trying to do with this podcast since, what, eight years ago, since we first started it. And my goal is, as we’ve kind of touched on already, is to talk about these issues in a way that as many people as possible understand and can potentially benefit from. And I’ve also got a bit of a mission to try looking at the broader media to change attitudes towards the coverage of longevity, science and longevity issues. I think there is this still sometimes a stigma associated with the subject, in that more mainstream journalists might think it’s all a little bit way out there. It’s these people that want to try to live forever and just keep on going and keep on going, and then it’s verging on science fiction, and that is a long way from what I actually think about it. I don’t believe or want to live forever. I just want to maximize the number of healthy years. And it’s as simple as that. And I always come back to diet and exercise and sleep. They don’t cost anything. They are cheap and easy and free to do. And they are still, I think, scientifically proven to be the best interventions to help us live a long, healthy life. There’s nothing way out. There’s nothing science fiction about that. But that sometimes is still the image that maybe you and I are going to get through, through doing this. And I want to try to just to to break down that, that barrier of understanding, to get people to think that it’s about your life, it’s about how you’re going to feel when you’re 70 or 80. And I phrase it like this sometimes imagine the worst times in your life. And they’re very often to do with sickness and ill health amongst your close family, whether it’s brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, those are the difficult times. And if we could just do something to make those times a little easier, maybe delay them, have them covering a shorter period of time in someone’s life when they’re sick? I think that is a very positive goal.

Brad Inman: Oh, Peter, I think you you just really nailed it. And you know the good news, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, the Wall Street Journal had a poll out, BBC had a poll out on longevity. The economists had a poll out that suggests to me now, I don’t know if it’s their advertising wagging the the tail that’s wagging the dog of the editorial side saying, hey, cover this. But I do think and it’s work like you’ve been doing for, you know, a long time. I’m new to this. I don’t get any credit at all. But I think what you’ve been doing and others, you know, it’s finally getting the attention of the mainstream media and what I like about it is good journalists are going to cover the good, the bad and the ugly. And I think that’s what we saw this weekend in the New Yorker article. It was very well done.

Peter Bowes: Yeah. And it’s important to cover the good, bad and ugly. It’s important to be critical and to have a very shrewd eye over what’s coming out of the universities and the the privately run longevity institutions. I think we need to be very, very critical about it, but we also need to be open minded and hopefully at your event and others. That’s what we’re going to get a very free…and I think what’s crucially important about what you’re doing is that it’s open to everyone. This isn’t just for doctors and Silicon Valley types and rich researchers. This is open to absolutely everyone who can get there.

Brad Inman: No question. And I think that’s again, what we saw missing is, you know, the public was invited and they weren’t you know, they they were considered we you know, that’s who we love. We love the everyday person getting information they couldn’t ordinarily get. And that’s what gets us very, very excited. And already the emails and the, you know, the the information we’re getting from that public and their enthusiasm is, you know, really gets me excited. I feel like we we hit a vein here. People that, you know, it was for billionaires, it was for, you know, and you read about that and you go, geez, I wish I could get in on that program. And some of it is still ridiculously overpriced. I mean, that full body scan I did Prenuvo was 2500. My wife did it in Europe for, you know, €100. I mean, we got to fix all that, but that’s another that’s for another day to advocate for, you know, the true democratization not only of information but of health care. But again, another subject. But if we can be just one little piece of that puzzle, that would be a dream of mine.

Peter Bowes: Let me ask you, Brad, in closing, and I, I ask many of my guests the same question. You’ve already actually touched on a little bit about this, but in terms of your own personal longevity, and you say you don’t wake up in the morning and have a number in your head that you want to live to be 80, 90, or 100 years old. But as you approach the next few decades, hopefully in your life, do you have certain aspirations? Do you have certain ambitions, goals that you want to try to reach?

Brad Inman: Well, I do have one that is tied to a number, and that’s I’d like to be around for my great grandchildren because I’ve had such joy from my grandchildren. But, you know, I look at all this as a journey of self-awareness, which we all know. If you’re on that journey, you will never, ever achieve it. You’ll die still on that journey. So that’s I want to live long to keep learning more. Like I’m always shocked. Like what you can learn in one day. Like I love to spend time chatting with people, service people. I have lots of parties. I’m known for having parties, which is probably why I like events. And I always invite the waiters and waitresses and other people. I learn more from them than I do from academics. I taught for a while at UC Berkeley in the J school, in the business school, and I always said I’d rather have a dinner with a, with a room with a handful of realtors than I would a bunch of nerdy academics, because these realtors, you know, they don’t get paid a regular salary, they don’t have tenure, they only get paid when they sell a house. And, you know, maybe they’re not the most sophisticated, worldly people in the world. But, you know, that’s all part of my journey, is to reach out and be tolerant and open to all points of view and all kinds of people. And and that just keeps me going every day. It’s exciting.

Peter Bowes: It is exciting. Brad I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. I wish you all the very best for the conference. The lineup sounds really interesting and really worthwhile and all the best for the future.

Brad Inman: Thank you very much, Peter, and I’m going to reach out to you to get more feedback, and maybe we can join hands in some adventures.

Peter Bowes: I would love to do that. Thank you so much.

Brad Inman: Take care.

Peter Bowes: The Livelong Summit takes place on March the 15th and 16th at the Palm Beach Convention Center in beautiful West Palm Beach, Florida. I will be there and very much looking forward to it. And if you can make it too, perhaps we can sit down, have a coffee and a conversation about human longevity. It would be great to hear your thoughts on some of the topics Brad and I have been discussing in this interview. Now you need to buy your ticket in advance, and if you use the code LLAMA at checkout, that’s LLAMA – LLAMA. The conference is offering you a 55% discount on the purchase of tickets. Yes, that’s a 55% discount.

You can find full details at livelongsummit.com I’ll also put the link to purchase tickets into the show notes for this episode. Put LLAMA into the promo box when you go to purchase tickets, and you’ll get that 55% discount. And I’ll see you in Palm Beach. This has been a Healthspan Media production. We’ll be back with another episode very soon. In the meantime, good health and thanks for listening.

The Live Long and Master Aging (LLAMA) podcast, a HealthSpan Media LLC production, shares ideas but does not offer medical advice. If you have health concerns of any kind, or you are considering adopting a new diet or exercise regime, you should consult your doctor.